May 4, 2021
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0:56Now PlayingIsrael’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a government by a midnight Tuesday deadline, giving a motley camp of rivals an opportunity to join forces to oust him -- or send the country headlong into a fifth election.
The March 23 election -- the fourth in two years -- gave neither Netanyahu nor his opponents a clear path to building a coalition. President Reuven Rivlin offered the prime minister, who’s facing trial in three corruption cases, the first crack last month after a plurality of lawmakers nominated him.
For the past four weeks, Netanyahu unsuccessfully toiled to woo rivals into an alliance and drive wedges within the opposition, but just before midnight he returned the mandate to Rivlin. The political turmoil is rocking the country at a time when tensions are escalating with Iran and its proxies, and high unemployment hasn’t been vanquished by an aggressive coronavirus vaccination campaign.
Rivlin now has three days to either tap the head of another party to try to build a governing coalition, or ask parliament to nominate one of its members -- even Netanyahu -- to patch together an administration. If the president opts for that first route, the leading contenders appear to be former Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party is parliament’s second-largest, and former Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the predominantly religious nationalist Yamina party, who hasn’t ruled out sitting with Netanyahu and whose support is imperative for any government to rise.
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